Santiago Journal; Graves Without a Name Yielding Their Secrets

By NATHANIEL C. NASH,

Published: September 19, 1991

SANTIAGO, Chile, Sept. 13—
They were buried, unidentified, in a remote corner of this capital city's sprawling General Cemetery. And now, under court order, the Chilean Government is exhuming and trying to identify the remains of more than 120 people who died in 1973 in the first three months of military rule by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

While other common graves and clandestine cemeteries have been found and excavated in the last 18 months, the number of unidentified bodies in Yard No. 29 is by far the largest.

The court's decision to order the exhumations represents one of the few times that relatives have been able to use the Chilean legal system to determine the whereabouts of family members who have vanished and to recover their remains.

The opening of the mass grave again focuses attention and promises to provide details on the summary executions that took place after the coup. A report issued by a special commission in March documented that more than 2,000 people were abducted and killed by the Pinochet forces. The bodies of more than 900 have never been found.

"We all have the sense of profound pain," said Rosemarie Bornand, a lawyer for the human rights branch of Chile's Roman Catholic Church. "The families of the missing cannot be appeased until they know what happened to their loved ones. This gives us hope that some will know." Pinochet's Long Rule

General Pinochet ruled Chile from September 1973, when he overthrew the elected Marxist Government of President Salvador Allende Gossens, until March 1990. Since stepping down, he has offended many here by references to the exhumation that many of his critics condemn as callous.

When it was mentioned to him recently that most of the crudely built coffins contain two bodies, he replied, "What a great saving." And when informed that the digging had uncovered the remains of Juan Bautista van Schouwen, the founder of a radical party, the Revolutionary Movement of the Left, the general said, "I congratulate the diggers."

The statements heightened tensions between the Chilean Army, of which General Pinochet is still Commander in Chief, and the elected Government of President Patricio Aylwin.

"The Government is shocked by the cruel remarks of General Pinochet," Enrique Correa, the Government's chief spokesman, said. "These cruel remarks offend the feelings of the relatives and of the country as a whole."

All the sets of remains recovered have bullet holes in skulls and clothing. Many arms and legs have been broken, implying torture. One victim was shot 35 times.

Though General Pinochet has recently said he was not aware of the large number of "disappeared persons," as these victims are referred to in this country and elsewhere in Latin America, family members still place most of the blame on him.

"He wants you to believe he is a fine man, a good guy, while we all know he was the No. 1 assassin in the country," said Sola Sierra, president of an association of families of those missing or arrested.

Daily, family members -- almost all women -- come to the cemetery. They weave dozens of carnations into the fence put up to keep the public away from the digging site, and hold quiet vigils. Many say they have been searching for almost 18 years.

What is extraordinary is that the digging has been going on at all. Under an amnesty law approved during General Pinochet's rule, which the Aylwin Government accepted as a condition for the general's turnover of power, violations of human rights between 1973 and 1978 cannot be prosecuted. Those were days of internal warfare, so the logic goes, times when abuses were inevitable and should be forgotten.

Yard No. 29, where black crosses over the graves bear the initials N. N. -- no name -- had been known for years as a place where unidentified victims of the coup were buried.

In 1978, the church human rights group tried to persuade a court to authorize digging, but a military tribunal ruled that such a matter was beyond the court's jurisdiction. Getting Hard Information

A year ago, however, after President Aylwin took power, the Interior Minister began investigating. The first step was to get autopsy information from the cemetery, especially fingerprints.

Those were matched with fingerprint records from the country's Civil Registration Office. This was a delicate maneuver because, Government officials say, that agency had so many Pinochet loyalists that there were only 14 employees considered trustworthy for the task.

At the same time, the church used a legal technicality to win a court order. It asserted that the corpses were interred illegally, as many graves contained more than one corpse. Based on that, Judge Andres Contreras ordered the graves opened.

"I only investigate if the people have been buried illegally," Judge Contreras said, admitting that he found himself in the middle of a volatile political struggle.

"When it becomes an issue of who killed them," he said, "then I have nothing to do with the case. I don't want to get in the middle of that."

Photo: The Chilean Government is trying to identify the remains of more that 120 people who died in 1973 in the first few months of military rule. Workers exhumed bodies from unmarked graves in a Santiago cemetery. (Associated Press)